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Lena Dunham talks about the advice from childhood that sticks with her

VPM | By Rachel Martin

Published April 23, 2026 at 8:56 PM EDT

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR’s Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Lena Dunham became famous after creating and starring in the HBO show “Girls.” She tells Wild Card host Rachel Martin she has been figuring out how to juggle stardom and chronic illness ever since. She writes about it in her new memoir called “Famesick.”

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

LENA DUNHAM: It’s really about that decade between – it’s really about – what do we call 2010 to 2020? Was it the – it’s not the aughts. It’s the…

RACHEL MARTIN: What do we call that?

DUNHAM: I don’t know.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

DUNHAM: A nightmare? Do we call it a nightmare, Rachel?

MARTIN: I think…

DUNHAM: Do we call it my…

MARTIN: …That’s the official term.

DUNHAM: …Personal hell?

MARTIN: (Laughter).

DUNHAM: No. It’s about those years, which did have a lot of magic in them. And there was also some really challenging stuff that had become pretty normalized for me.

DETROW: Dunham spoke with Rachel Martin about her life before “Girls.”

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

MARTIN: What’s something someone told you that changed your trajectory?

DUNHAM: What is something that someone told me? When I was – I don’t know – probably in, like, fifth grade or something, I had agreed – not agreed to – I had wanted to go to this very specific drama camp that was for musical theater. I think it was called Applause. I think it was called Applause.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

DUNHAM: And I was very excited about it, and I couldn’t stop talking about how I was going to go to Applause. And we were going to perform “Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat” (ph) and whatever. And, like, the kids were, like, little musical theater sharks, which is…

MARTIN: (Laughter).

DUNHAM: …Like, that very classic depiction of musical theater kids who would truly throw one another in front of a moving bus if it meant sort of getting out – making it out…

MARTIN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: …From understudy, or whatever. And I got home, and I was like, Mom, I really don’t like Applause, but I can’t be a quitter.

MARTIN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And my mom went, why can’t you be a quitter? What’s wrong with quitting things? Quitting – I think she actually said, quitting is fun. I love quitting.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

DUNHAM: And my mom is someone who is extremely ambitious…

MARTIN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: …And dogged. But also, if she’s not feeling it…

MARTIN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: …She’s not feeling it.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

DUNHAM: And I think that there’s this sort of idea that following through despite everything is a value. It’s a value in relationships. It’s a value in work. And there’s plenty – the thing I think she was really trying to say is there’s so much in life you can’t quit. You know what I mean?

MARTIN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Like, you can’t quit your family. You can’t quit your body.

MARTIN: Right.

DUNHAM: You can’t quit your brain. And so if there’s something, like…

MARTIN: You have agency…

DUNHAM: She’s always…

MARTIN: …Over it. Yeah.

DUNHAM: If you have agency over – have agency over it.

MARTIN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And in my adulthood, it has often come back into my brain. Quitting is fun. And last week, my brother texted me about quitting something, and he went, I love quitting, just like mom. And I was like, yeah.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

DUNHAM: So do I. And there’s lots of stuff that I will never quit, but I did quit Applause. And then I stayed home for, like, two weeks and read, and it was fantastic.

MARTIN: I remember when someone told me I could stop reading a book, and it was so liberating.

DUNHAM: Oh…

MARTIN: You know, when you’re, like, in a book. And you’re like, I don’t – I’m not into this book, but I got to…

DUNHAM: I didn’t know that…

MARTIN: …Keep reading this book.

DUNHAM: …Until I was, like, 20. I didn’t know that you could stop reading a book.

MARTIN: Right.

DUNHAM: And now, I stop reading books all the time.

MARTIN: All the time. It’s so liberating.

DUNHAM: Or I pick them up and read 15 pages of them, and I go, I got what I needed from that.

MARTIN: That’s right. And now we’re done.

DUNHAM: And if I feel compelled to finish it, I will.

DETROW: You can watch the full conversation with Lena Dunham on YouTube at NPR Wild Card. Her new memoir “Famesick” is out now.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Rachel Martin

Rachel Martin is a founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. Martin's interviews take listeners behind the headlines to understand the people at the center of those stories.

She spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was previously the host of Weekend Edition Sunday for four years, where she launched the "For the Record" series.

Martin also served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues. She traveled regularly to Iraq and Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his successor Leon Panetta, reporting on the U.S. wars and the effectiveness of the Pentagon's counterinsurgency strategy. Martin also reported extensively on the changing demographic of the U.S. military – from the debate over whether to allow women to fight in combat units, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Her reporting on how the military is changing also took her to a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico for a rare look at how the military trains drone pilots.

Martin also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent based in Berlin from 2005-2006. During her time in Europe, she covered the London terrorist attacks, the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor to Germany, the 2006 World Cup and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.

Her foreign reporting experience extends beyond Europe. Martin has also worked extensively in Afghanistan. She began reporting from there as a freelancer during the summer of 2003, covering the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion. In fall 2004, Martin returned for several months to cover Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on human rights issues in Afghanistan, the fledgling political and governance system and the U.S.-NATO fight against the insurgency. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabi in 2015 to report on women's rights and in 2022 she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.

Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, based in New York — a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.

In 2006-2007, Martin served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. As one of NPR's reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre that same year, she was on the school's campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg, Va., covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.

Martin started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.

She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. Martin also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

See stories by Rachel Martin